Pool
by Terabiel
Summary: Know then that it is the Year 10,191. The universe is ruled by the Mikado Emperor, my father. In this time, the most precious substance in the universe is the juice Melange... the Juice extends life, the Juice expands consciousness. The Juice exists on only one planet in the entire universe. A wet, misty planet with high mountains. The Planet is Jusenkyo... also known as Pool.
1. Chapter 1

POOL

By Frank Herbert and Terabiel

This is an experiment, a work of satire, a mashup of the text of Dune with the cultural references changed and the characters of Ranma 1/2 substituted. I claim no ownership of any of the characters or hybrid characters, who are the property of Takahashi-chan or Herbert-kun respectively. I was inspired in part by 50 Shades of Gray's composition and decided to give it a try.

Book 1 - Pool

1

 _A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Rumiko knows. To begin your study of the life of Neko'Ken, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Mikado Emperor, Soun IV. And take the most special care that you locate Neko'Ken in his place: the planet Jusenkyo. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Shonen and lived his first fifteen years there. Jusenkyo, the planet known as Pool, is forever his place._

-from "Manual of Neko'Ken" by the Princess Nabiki

In the week before their departure to Jusenkyo, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Ranma.

It was a warm night at Castle Shonen, and the ancient pile of stone that had served the Atreides family as home for twenty-six generations bore that cooled-sweat feeling it acquired before a change in the weather.

The old woman was let in by the side door down the vaulted passage by Ranma's room and she was allowed a moment to peer in at him where he lay in his bed.

By the half-light of a suspensor lamp, dimmed and hanging near the floor, the awakened boy could see a bulky female shape at his door, standing one step ahead of his mother. The old woman was a witch shadow — hair like matted spider webs, hooded 'round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels.

"Is he not small for his age, Nodoka?" the old woman asked. Her voice wheezed and twanged like an untuned samisen.

Ranma's mother answered in her soft contralto: "The Atreides are known to start late getting their growth, Your Reverence."

"So I've heard, so I've heard," wheezed the old woman. "Yet he's already fifteen."

"Yes, Your Reverence."

"He's awake and listening to us," said the old woman. "Sly little rascal." She chuckled."But royalty has need of slyness. And if he's really the Kwisatz Nyannichuan... well..."

Within the shadows of his bed, Ranma held his eyes open to mere slits. Two bird-bright ovals - the eyes of the old woman — seemed to expand and glow as they stared into his.

"Sleep well, you sly little rascal," said the old woman. "Tomorrow you'll need all your faculties to meet my baksai tenketsu."

And she was gone, pushing his mother out, closing the door with a solid thump.

Ranma lay awake wondering: What's a baksai tenketsu?

In all the upset during this time of change, the old woman was the strangest thing he had seen.

Your Reverence.

And the way she called his mother Nodoka like a common serving wench instead of what she was - a Bene Rumiko Lady, a duke's concubine and mother of the ducal heir.

Is a baksai tenketsu something of Jusenkyo I must know before we go there? he wondered. He mouthed her strange words: Baksai tenketsu... Kwisatz Nyannichuan.

There had been so many things to learn. Jusenkyo would be a place so different from Shonen that Ranma's mind whirled with the new knowledge. Jusenkyo — Pool — Mountain Planet.

Thufir Happosai, his father's Master of Ninjas, had explained it: their mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, had been on Jusenkyo eighty years, holding the planet in quasi-han under a SHOGAKUKAN Company contract to extract the geriatric juice, melange. Now the Harkonnens were leaving to be replaced by the House of Atreides in han-complete — an apparent victory for the Duke Genma. Yet, Happosai had said, this appearance contained the deadliest peril, for the Duke Genma was popular among the Great Houses of the Kokkai.

"A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful," Happosai had said.

Jusenkyo — Pool — Mountain Planet.

Ranma fell asleep to dream of an Jusenkyoeen cavern, silent people all around him moving in the dim light of glowglobes. It was solemn there and like a shrine as he listened to a faint sound — the toc-toc-toc of bamboo. Even while he remained in the dream, Ranma knew he would remember it upon awakening. He always remembered the dreams that were predictions.

The dream faded.

Ranma awoke to feel himself in the warmth of his bed — thinking... thinking. This world of Castle Shonen, without play or companions his own age, perhaps did not deserve sadness in farewell. Dr. Tofu, his teacher, had hinted that the samurai class system was not rigidly guarded on Jusenkyo. The planet sheltered people who lived at the mountain fringe without daimyo or shogun to command them: will-o'-the-mist people called Amazon, marked down on no census of the Imperial Jinshi.

Jusenkyo — Pool — Mountain Planet.

Ranma sensed his own tensions, decided to practice one of the mind-body lessons his mother had taught him. Three quick breaths triggered the responses: he fell into the floating awareness... focusing the consciousness... aortal dilation... avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness... to be conscious by choice... blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload regions... one does not obtain food-safety-freedom by instinct alone... animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct... the animal destroys and does not produce... animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual... the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe... focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid... bodily integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of cell needs... all things/cells/beings are impermanent... strive for flow-permanence within...

Over and over and over within Ranma's floating awareness the lesson rolled.

When dawn touched Ranma's window sill with yellow light, he sensed it through closed eyelids, opened them, hearing then the renewed bustle and hurry in the castle, seeing the familiar patterned beams of his bedroom ceiling.

The hall door opened and his mother peered in, hair like obsidian held with a bronze ribbon at the crown, her oval face emotionless and green eyes staring solemnly.

"You're awake," she said. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes."

He studied the tallness of her, saw the hint of tension in her shoulders as she chose clothing for him from the closet racks. Another might have missed the tension, but she had trained him in the Bene Rumiko Way - in the minutiae of observation. She turned, holding a semiformal jacket for him. It carried the red Atreides panda crest above the breast pocket.

"Hurry and dress," she said. "Reverend Miko is waiting."

"I dreamed of her once," Ranma said. "Who is she?"

"She was my teacher at the Bene Rumiko school. Now, she's the Emperor's Truthsayer. And Ranma..." She hesitated."You must tell her about your dreams."

"I will. Is she the reason we got Jusenkyo?"

"We did not get Jusenkyo." Nodoka flicked dust from a pair of trousers, hung them with the jacket on the dressing stand beside his bed. "Don't keep Reverend Miko waiting."

Ranma sat up, hugged his knees. "What's a baksai tenketsu?"

Again, the training she had given him exposed her almost invisible hesitation, a nervous betrayal he felt as fear.

Nodoka crossed to the window, flung wide the draperies, stared across the river orchards toward Mount Fuji. "You'll learn about... the baksai tenketsu soon enough," she said.

He heard the fear in her voice and wondered at it.

Nodoka spoke without turning. "Reverend Miko is waiting in my morning room. Please hurry."

The Reverend Miko Gaius Helen Azusa sat in a tapestried chair watching mother and son approach. Windows on each side of her overlooked the curving southern bend of the river and the green rice-paddies of the Atreides family holding, but the Reverend Miko ignored the view. She was feeling her age this morning, more than a little petulant. She blamed it on space travel and association with that abominable Touring Guild and its secretive ways. But here was a mission that required personal attention from a Bene Rumiko-with-the-Sight. Even the Mikado Emperor's Truthsayer couldn't evade that responsibility when the duty call came.

Damn that Nodoka! the Reverend Miko thought. If only she'd borne us a girl as she was ordered to do!

Nodoka stopped three paces from the chair, dropped a small curtsy, a gentle flick of left hand along the line of her skirt. Ranma gave the short bow his dancing master had taught — the one used "when in doubt of another's station."

The nuances of Ranma's greeting were not lost on the Reverend Miko. She said: "He's a cautious one, Nodoka."

Nodoka's hand went to Ranma's shoulder, tightened there. For a heartbeat, fear pulsed through her palm. Then she had herself under control. "Thus he has been taught, Your Reverence." What does she fear? Ranma wondered.

The old woman studied Ranma in one gestalten flicker: face oval like Nodoka's, but strong bones... hair: the Duke's black-black but with browline of the maternal grandfather who cannot be named, and that thin, disdainful nose; shape of directly staring green eyes: like the old Duke, the paternal grandfather who is dead.

Now, there was a man who appreciated the power of bravura — even in death, the Reverend Miko thought.

"Teaching is one thing," she said, "the basic ingredient is another. We shall see." The old eyes darted a hard glance at Nodoka. "Leave us. I enjoin you to practice the meditation of peace."

Nodoka took her hand from Ranma's shoulder. "Your Reverence, I—"

"Nodoka, you know it must be done." Ranma looked up at his mother, puzzled.

Nodoka straightened. "Yes... of course."

Ranma looked back at the Reverend Miko. Politeness and his mother's obvious awe of this old woman argued caution. Yet he felt an angry apprehension at the fear he sensed radiating from his mother.

"Ranma..." Nodoka took a deep breath. "... this test you're about to receive... it's important to me."

"Test?" He looked up at her.

"Remember that you're a duke's son," Nodoka said. She whirled and strode from the room in a dry swishing of kimono. The door closed solidly behind her.

Ranma faced the old woman, holding anger in check. "Does one dismiss the Lady Nodoka as though she were a serving wench?"

A smile flicked the corners of the wrinkled old mouth. "The Lady Nodoka was my serving wench, lad, for fourteen years at school." She nodded. "And a good one, too. Now, you come here!"

The command whipped out at him. Ranma found himself obeying before he could think about it. Using the Voice on me, he thought. He stopped at her gesture, standing beside her knees.

"See this?" she asked. From the folds of her robe, she lifted a green jade cube about fifteen centimeters on a side. She turned it and Ranma saw that one side was open — black and oddly frightening. No light penetrated that open blackness.

"Put your right hand in the box," she said.

Fear shot through Ranma. He started to back away, but the old woman said: "Is this how you obey your mother?"

He looked up into bird-bright eyes.

Slowly, feeling the compulsions and unable to inhibit them, Ranma put his hand into the box. He felt first a sense of cold as the blackness closed around his hand, then slick stone against his fingers and a prickling as though his hand were asleep.

A predatory look filled the old woman's features. She lifted her right hand away from the box and poised the hand close to the side of Ranma's neck. He saw a glint of metal there and started to turn toward it.

"Stop!" she snapped.

Using the Voice again! He swung his attention back to her face.

"I hold at your neck the baksai tenketsu, " she said. "The baksai tenketsu, the breaking-point. It's a needle with a drop of poison on its tip. Ah-ah! Don't pull away or you'll feel that poison."

Ranma tried to swallow in a dry throat. He could not take his attention from the seamed old face, the glistening eyes, the pale gums around silvery metal teeth that flashed as she spoke.

"A duke's son must know about poisons," she said. "It's the way of our times, eh? Doky, to be poisoned in your drink. Kubutsu, to be poisoned in your food. The quick ones and the slow ones and the ones in between. Here's a new one for you: the baksai tenketsu. It kills only animals."

Pride overcame Ranma's fear. "You dare suggest a duke's son is an animal?" he demanded.

"Let us say I suggest you may be human," she said. "Steady! I warn you not to try jerking away. I am old, but my hand can drive this needle into your neck before you escape me."

"Who are you?" he whispered. "How did you trick my mother into leaving me alone with you? Are you from the Harkonnens?"

"The Harkonnens? Bless us, no! Now, be silent." A dry finger touched his neck and he stilled the involuntary urge to leap away.

"Good," she said. "You pass the first test. Now, here's the way of the rest of it: If you withdraw your hand from the box you die. This is the only rule. Keep your hand in the box and live. Withdraw it and die."

Ranma took a deep breath to still his trembling. "If I call out there'll be servants on you in seconds and you'll die."

"Servants will not pass your mother who stands guard outside that door. Depend on it. Your mother survived this test. Now it's your turn. Be honored. We seldom administer this to man-children."

Curiosity reduced Ranma's fear to a manageable level. He heard truth in the old woman's voice, no denying it. If his mother stood guard out there... if this were truly a test... And whatever it was, he knew himself caught in it, trapped by that hand at his neck: the baksai tenketsu. He recalled the response from the Litany against Fear as his mother had taught him out of the Bene Rumiko rite.

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

He felt calmness return, said: "Get on with it, old woman."

"Old woman!" she snapped. "You've courage, and that can't be denied. Well, we shall see, sama." She bent close, lowered her voice almost to a whisper. "You will feel pain in this hand within the box. Pain. But! Withdraw the hand and I'll touch your neck with my baksai tenketsu — the death so swift it's like the fall of the headsman's axe. Withdraw your hand and the baksai tenketsu takes you. Understand?"

"What's in the box?"

"Pain."

He felt increased tingling in his hand, pressed his lips tightly together. How could this be a test? he wondered. The tingling became an itch.

The old woman said, "You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind."

The itch became the faintest burning. "Why are you doing this?" he demanded.

"To determine if you're human. Be silent."

Ranma clenched his left hand into a fist as the burning sensation increased in the other hand. It mounted slowly: heat upon heat upon heat... upon heat. He felt the fingernails of his free hand biting the palm. He tried to flex the fingers of the burning hand, but couldn't move them.

"It burns," he whispered.

"Silence!"

Pain throbbed up his arm. Sweat stood out on his forehead. Every fiber cried out to withdraw the hand from that burning pit... but... the baksai tenketsu. Without turning his head, he tried to move his eyes to see that terrible needle poised beside his neck. He sensed that he was breathing in gasps, tried to slow his breaths and couldn't.

Pain!

His world emptied of everything except that hand immersed in agony, the ancient face inches away staring at him.

His lips were so dry he had difficulty separating them. The burning! The burning!

He thought he could feel skin curling black on that agonized hand, the flesh crisping and dropping away until only charred bones remained. It stopped!

As though a switch had been turned off, the pain stopped.

Ranma felt his right arm trembling, felt sweat bathing his body.

"Enough," the old woman muttered. "Honto ne! No woman child ever withstood that much. I must've wanted you to fail." She leaned back, withdrawing the baksai tenketsu from the side of his neck. "Take your hand from the box, young human, and look at it."

He fought down an aching shiver, stared at the lightless void where his hand seemed to remain of its own volition. Memory of pain inhibited every movement. Reason told him he would withdraw a blackened stump from that box.

"Do it!" she snapped.

He jerked his hand from the box, stared at it astonished. Not a mark. No sign of agony on the flesh. He held up the hand, turned it, flexed the fingers.

"Pain by nerve induction," she said. "Can't go around maiming potential humans. There're those who'd give a pretty for the secret of this box, though." She slipped it into the folds of her robes.

"But the pain—" he said.

"Pain," she sniffed. "A human can override any nerve in the body."

Ranma felt his left hand aching, uncurled the clenched fingers, looked at four bloody marks where fingernails had bitten his palm. He dropped the hand to his side, looked at the old woman. "You did that to my mother once?"

"Ever sift sand through a screen?" she asked.

The tangential slash of her question shocked his mind into a higher awareness: Sand through a screen, he nodded.

"We Bene Rumiko sift people to find the humans."

He lifted his right hand, willing the memory of the pain. "And that's all there is to it — pain?"

"I observed you in pain, lad. Pain's merely the axis of the test. Your mother's told you about our ways of observing. I see the signs of her teaching in you. Our test is crisis and observation."

He heard the confirmation in her voice, said: "It's truth!"

She stared at him. He senses truth! Could he be the one? Could he truly be the one? She extinguished the excitement, reminding herself: "Hope clouds observation."

"You know when people believe what they say," she said.

"I know it."

The harmonics of ability confirmed by repeated test were in his voice. She heard them, said: "Perhaps you are the Kwisatz Nyannichuan. Sit down, little brother, here at my feet."

"I prefer to stand."

"Your mother sat at my feet once."

"I'm not my mother."

"You hate us a little, eh?" She looked toward the door, called out: "Nodoka!" The door flew open and Nodoka stood there staring hard-eyed into the room. Hardness melted from her as she saw Ranma. She managed a faint smile.

"Nodoka, have you ever stopped hating me?" the old woman asked.

"I both love and hate you," Nodoka said. "The hate — that's from pains I must never forget. The love — that's..."

"Just the basic fact," the old woman said, but her voice was gentle. "You may come in now, but remain silent. Close that door and mind it that no one interrupts us."

Nodoka stepped into the room, closed the door and stood with her back to it. "My son lives," she thought. "My son lives and is... human. I knew he was... but... he lives. Now, I can go on living." The door felt hard and real against her back. Everything in the room was immediate and pressing against her senses.

"My son lives."

Ranma looked at his mother. She told the truth. He wanted to get away alone and think this experience through, but knew he could not leave until he was dismissed. The old woman had gained a power over him. They spoke truth. His mother had undergone this test. There must be terrible purpose in it... the pain and fear had been terrible. He understood terrible purposes. They drove against all odds. They were their own necessity. Ranma felt that he had been infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose was.

"Some day, lad," the old woman said, "you, too, may have to stand outside a door like that. It takes a measure of doing."

Ranma looked down at the hand that had known pain, then up to the Reverend Miko. The sound of her voice had contained a difference then from any other voice in his experience. The words were outlined in brilliance. There was an edge to them. He felt that any question he might ask her would bring an answer that could lift him out of his flesh-world into something greater.

"Why do you test for humans?" he asked.

"To set you free."

"Free?"

"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

" 'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind,' " Ranma quoted.

"Right out of the Maiden Crusade and the Blue Buddhist Sutra," she said. "But what the B.B. Sutra should've said is: 'Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.' Have you studied the Mentat in your service?"

"I've studied with Thufir Happosai."

"The Great Revolt took away a crutch," she said. "It forced human minds to develop. Schools were started to train human talents." "Bene Rumiko schools?"

She nodded. "We have two chief survivors of those ancient schools: the Bene Rumiko and the Touring Guild. The Guild, so we think, emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Rumiko performs another function."

"Politics," he said.

"Honto ne!" the old woman said. She sent a hard glance at Nodoka. "I've not told him. Your Reverence," Nodoka said.

The Reverend Miko returned her attention to Ranma. "You did that on remarkably few clues," she said. "Politics indeed. The original Bene Rumiko school was directed by those who saw the need of a thread of continuity in human affairs. They saw there could be no such continuity without separating human stock from animal stock — for breeding purposes."

The old woman's words abruptly lost their special sharpness for Ranma. He felt an offense against what his mother called his instinct for rightness. It wasn't that Reverend Miko lied to him. She obviously believed what she said. It was something deeper, something tied to his terrible purpose.

He said: "But my mother tells me many Bene Rumiko of the schools don't know their ancestry."

"The genetic lines are always in our records," she said. "Your mother knows that either she's of Bene Rumiko descent or her stock was acceptable in itself."

"Then why couldn't she know who her parents are?"

"Some do... Many don't. We might, for example, have wanted to breed her to a close relative to set up a dominant in some genetic trait. We have many reasons."

Again, Ranma felt the offense against rightness. He said: "You take a lot on yourselves."

The Reverend Miko stared at him, wondering: Did I hear criticism in his voice? "We carry a heavy burden," she said.

Ranma felt himself coming more and more out of the shock of the test. He leveled a measuring stare at her, said: "You say maybe I'm the... Kwisatz Nyannichuan. What's that, a human baksai tenketsu?"

"Ranma," Nodoka said. "You mustn't take that tone with —"

"I'll handle this, Nodoka," the old woman said. "Now, lad, do you know about the Truthsayer drug?"

"You take it to improve your ability to detect falsehood," he said. "My mother's told me."

"Have you ever seen truthtrance?"

He shook his head. "No."

"The drug's dangerous," she said, "but it gives insight. When a Truthsayer's gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory — in her body's memory. We look down so many avenues of the past... but only feminine avenues." Her voice took on a note of sadness. "Yet, there's a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot — into both feminine and masculine pasts."

"Your Kwisatz Nyannichuan?"

"Yes, the one who can be many places at once: the Kwisatz Nyannichuan. Many men have tried the drug... so many, but none has succeeded."

"They tried and failed, all of them?"

"Oh, no." She shook her head. "They tried and died."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

[Note: This is the original text of Dune with altered cultural references and the cast of Ranma 1/2 substituted for their Dune counterparts. It is an work of absurdist humor.]

 _To attempt an understanding of Neko'Ken without understanding his mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be._

-from "Manual of Neko'Ken" by the Princess Nabiki

It was a relief globe of a world, partly in shadows, spinning under the impetus of a fat hand that glittered with rings. The globe sat on a freeform stand at one wall of a windowless room whose other walls presented a patchwork of multicolored scrolls, filmbooks, tapes, and reels. Light glowed in the room from golden balls hanging in mobile suspensor fields.

An ellipsoid desk with a top of jade-pink petrified elacca wood stood at the center of the room. Veriform suspensor chairs ringed it, two of them occupied. In one sat a dark-haired youth of about sixteen years, round of face and with sullen eyes. The other held a slender, short man with effeminate face.

Both youth and man stared at the globe and the man half-hidden in shadows spinning it.

A chuckle sounded beside the globe. A basso voice rumbled out of the chuckle: "There it is, Sasuke — the biggest mantrap in all history. And the Duke's headed into its jaws. Is it not a magnificent thing that I, the Principal Kuno Harkonnen, do?"

"Assuredly, Principal," said the man. His voice came out tenor with a sweet, musical quality.

The fat hand descended onto the globe, stopped the spinning. Now, all eyes in the room could focus on the motionless surface and see that it was the kind of globe made for wealthy collectors or planetary governors of the Empire. It had the stamp of Imperial handicraft about it. Latitude and longitude lines were laid in with hair-fine platinum wire. The polar caps were insets of finest cloud-milk diamonds.

The fat hand moved, tracing details on the surface."I invite you to observe," the basso voice rumbled."Observe closely, Sasuke, and you, too, Tatewaki-Rautha, my darling: from sixty degrees north to seventy degrees south — these exquisite swirls. Their coloring: does it not remind you of sweet cotton candy? And everywhere you see blue of lakes and rivers and seas. And these lovely polar caps — so vast. Could anyone mistake this place? Jusenkyo ! Truly unique. A superb setting for a unique Victory."

A smile touched Sasuke's lips. "And to think. Principal: the Mikado Emperor believes he's given the Duke your juice planet. How poignant."

"That's a nonsensical statement," the Principal rumbled. "You say this to confuse young Tatewaki-Rautha, but it is not necessary to confuse my nephew."

The sullen-faced youth stirred in his chair, smoothed a wrinkle in the blue kimono he wore. He sat upright as a discreet tapping sounded at the door in the wall behind him.

Sasuke unfolded from his chair, crossed to the door, cracked it wide enough to accept a message cylinder. He closed the door, unrolled the cylinder and scanned it. A chuckle sounded from him. Another.

"Well?" the Principal demanded.

"The fool answered us, Principal!"

"Whenever did an Atreides refuse the opportunity for a gesture?" the Principal asked."Well, what does he say?"

"He's most uncouth, Principal. Addresses you as 'Harkonnen-kun' - no 'Tono' no 'San', no title, nothing."

"It's a good name," the Principal growled, his voice betraying his impatience. "What does dear Genma say?"

"He says: 'Your offer of a meeting is refused. I have ofttimes met your treachery and this all men know.' "

"And?" the Principal asked.

"He says: 'The art of koso still has admirers in the Empire.' He signs it: 'Duke Genma of Jusenkyo.' " Sasuke began to laugh. "Of Jusenkyo! Oh, my! This is almost too rich!"

"Be silent, Sasuke," the Principal said, and the laughter stopped as though shut off with a switch. "Koso, is it?" the Principal asked. "Vendetta, heh? And he uses the nice old word so rich in tradition to be sure I know he means it."

"You made the peace gesture," Sasuke said."The forms have been obeyed."

"For a Mentat, you talk too much, Sasuke," the Principal said. And he thought: I must do away with that one soon. He has almost outlived his usefulness. The Principal stared across the room at his Mentat-Ninja, seeing the feature about him that most people noticed first: the eyes, the shaded slits of green within green, the eyes without any white in them at all.

A grin flashed across Sasuke's face. It was like a mask grimace beneath those eyes like holes. "But, Principal! Never has revenge been more beautiful. It is to see a plan of the most exquisite treachery: to make Genma exchange Shonen for Pool — and without alternative because the Emperor orders it. How waggish of you!"

In a cold voice, the Principal said: "You have a flux of the mouth, Sasuke."

"But I am happy, my Principal. Whereas you... you are touched by jealousy."

"Sasuke!"

"Ah-ah. Principal! Is it not regrettable you were unable to devise this delicious scheme by yourself?"

"Someday I will have you strangled, Sasuke."

"Of a certainty, Principal. Kowai! But a kind act is never lost, eh?"

"Have you been chewing shinji or pocky, Sasuke?"

"Truth without fear surprises the Principal," Sasuke said. His face drew down into a caricature of a frowning mask. "Ah, hah! But you see, Principal, I know as a Mentat when you will send the executioner. You will hold back just so long as I am useful. To move sooner would be wasteful and I'm yet of much use. I know what it is you learned from that lovely Pool planet — waste not. True, Principal?"

The Principal continued to stare at Sasuke.

Tatewaki-Rautha squirmed in his chair. These wrangling fools! he thought. My uncle cannot talk to his Mental without arguing. Do they think I've nothing to do except listen their arguments?

"Tachi," the Principal said. "I told you to listen and learn when I invited you in here. Are you learning?"

"Yes, Uncle." the voice was carefully subservient.

"Sometimes I wonder about Sasuke," the Principal said. "I cause pain out of necessity, but he... I swear he takes a positive delight in it. For myself, I can feel pity toward the poor Duke Genma. Dr. Tofu will move against him soon, and that'll be the end of all the Atreides. But surely Genma will know whose hand directed the pliant doctor... and knowing that will be a terrible thing."

"Then why haven't you directed the doctor to slip a tanto between his ribs quietly and efficiently?" Sasuke asked."You talk of pity, but — "

"The Duke must know when I encompass his doom," the Principal said."And the other Great Houses must learn of it. The knowledge will give them pause. I'll gain a bit more room to maneuver. The necessity is obvious, but I don't have to like it."

"Room to maneuver," Sasuke sneered. "Already you have the Emperor's eyes on you, Principal. You move too boldly. One day the Emperor will send a legion or two of his Kaishaku down here onto Furinkan Prime and that'll be an end to the Principal Kuno Harkonnen."

"You'd like to see that, wouldn't you, Sasuke?" the Principal asked. "You'd enjoy seeing the Corps of Kaishaku pillage through my cities and sack this castle. You'd truly enjoy that."

"Does the Principal need to ask?" Sasuke whispered.

"You should've been a Daimyo of the Corps," the Principal said. "You're too interested in blood and pain. Perhaps I was too quick with my promise of the spoils of Jusenkyo."

Sasuke took five curiously mincing steps into the room, stopped directly behind Tatewaki-Rautha. There was a tight air of tension in the room, and the youth looked up at Sasuke with a worried frown.

"Do not toy with Sasuke, Principal," Sasuke said. "You promised me the Lady Nodoka. You promised her to me."

"For what, Sasuke?" the Principal asked. "For pain?" Sasuke stared at him, dragging out the silence.

Tatewaki-Rautha moved his suspensor chair to one side, said: "Uncle, do I have to stay? You said you'd —"

"My darling Tatewaki-Rautha grows impatient," the Principal said. He moved within the shadows beside the globe. "Patience, Tachi." And he turned his attention back to the Mentat. "What of the Dukeling, the child Ranma, my dear Sasuke?"

"The trap will bring him to you, Principal," Sasuke muttered.

"That's not my question," the Principal said. "You'll recall that you predicted the Bene Rumiko witch would bear a daughter to the Duke. You were wrong, eh, Mentat?"

"I'm not often wrong, Principal," Sasuke said, and for the first time there was fear in his voice. "Give me that: I'm not often wrong. And you know yourself these Bene Rumiko bear mostly daughters. Even the Emperor's consort had produced only females."

"Uncle," said Tatewaki-Rautha, "you said there'd be something important here for me to — "

"Listen to my nephew," the Principal said. "He aspires to rule my Principality, yet he cannot rule himself." The Principal stirred beside the globe, a shadow among shadows. "Well then, Tatewaki-Rautha Harkonnen, I summoned you here hoping to teach you a bit of wisdom. Have you observed our good Mentat? You should've learned something from this exchange."

"But, Uncle — "

"A most efficient Mentat, Sasuke, wouldn't you say, Tachi?"

"Yes, but —"

"Ah! Indeed but! But he consumes too much juice, drinks it like soda. Look at his eyes! He might've come directly from the Jusenkyoeen labor pool. Efficient, Sasuke, but he's still emotional and prone to passionate outbursts. Efficient, Sasuke, but he still can err."

Sasuke spoke in a low, sullen tone: "Did you call me in here to impair my efficiency with criticism, Principal?"

"Impair your efficiency? You know me better, Sasuke. I wish only for my nephew to understand the limitations of a Mentat."

"Are you already training my replacement?" Sasuke demanded.

"Replace you? Why, Sasuke, where could I find another Mentat with your cunning and venom?"

"The same place you found me, Principal."

"Perhaps I should at that," the Principal mused. "You do seem a bit unstable lately. And the juice you drink!"

"Are my pleasures too expensive, Principal? Do you object to them?"

"My dear Sasuke, your pleasures are what tie you to me. How could I object to that? I merely wish my nephew to observe this about you."

"Then I'm on display," Sasuke said. "Shall I dance? Shall I perform my various functions for the eminent Tatewaki-Rau-"

"Precisely," the Principal said. "You are on display. Now, be silent." He glanced at Tatewaki-Rautha, noting his nephew's lips, the full and pouting look of them, the Harkonnen genetic marker, now twisted slightly in amusement. "This is a Mentat, Tachi. It has been trained and conditioned to perform certain duties. The fact that it's encased in a human body, however, must not be overlooked. A serious drawback, that. I sometimes think the ancients with their thinking machines had the right idea."

"They were toys compared to me," Sasuke snarled. "You yourself, Principal, could outperform those machines."

"Perhaps," the Principal said. "Ah, well..." He took a deep breath, belched. "Now, Sasuke, outline for my nephew the salient features of our campaign against the House of Atreides. Function as a Mentat for us, if you please."

"Principal, I've warned you not to trust one so young with this information. My observations of -"

"I'll be the judge of this," the Principal said. "I give you an order, Mentat. Perform one of your various functions."

"So be it," Sasuke said. He straightened, assuming an odd attitude of dignity — as though it were another mask, but this time clothing his entire body. "In a few days Standard, the entire household of the Duke Genma will embark on a Touring Guild liner for Jusenkyo. The Guild will deposit them at the city of Jusenkyoeen rather than at our city of Hebereke. The Duke's Mentat, Thufir Happosai, will have concluded rightly that Jusenkyoeen is easier to defend."

"Listen carefully, Tachi," the Principal said. "Observe the plans within plans within plans."

Tatewaki-Rautha nodded, thinking: This is more like it. The old monster is letting me in on secret things at last. He must really mean for me to be his heir.

"There are several tangential possibilities," Sasuke said. "I indicate that House Atreides will go to Jusenkyo. We must not, however, ignore the possibility the Duke has contracted with the Guild to remove him to a place of safety outside the System. Others in like circumstances have become renegade Houses, taking family atomics and shields and fleeing beyond the Imperium."

"The Duke's too proud a man for that," the Principal said.

"It is a possibility," Sasuke said. "The ultimate effect for us would be the same, however."

"No, it would not!" the Principal growled. "I must have him dead and his line ended."

"That's the high probability," Sasuke said. "There are certain preparations that indicate when a House is going renegade. The Duke appears to be doing none of these things."

"So," the Principal sighed. "Get on with it, Sasuke."

"At Jusenkyoeen," Sasuke said, "the Duke and his family will occupy the Residency, lately the home of Count and Lady Fenring."

"The Ambassador to the Smugglers," the Principal chuckled.

"Ambassador to what?" Tatewaki-Rautha asked.

"Your uncle makes a joke," Sasuke said. "He calls Count Fenring 'Ambassador to the Smugglers', indicating the Emperor's interest in smuggling operations on Jusenkyo."

Tatewaki-Rautha turned a puzzled stare on his uncle. "Why?"

"Don't be dense, Tachi," the Principal snapped. "As long as the Guild remains effectively outside Imperial control, how could it be otherwise? How else could spies and ninjas move about?"

Tatewaki-Rautha's mouth made a soundless "Oh-h-h-h."

"We've arranged diversions at the Residency," Sasuke said. "There'll be an attempt on the life of the Atreides heir — an attempt which could succeed."

"Sasuke," the Principal rumbled, "you indicated — "

"I indicated accidents can happen," Sasuke said. "And the attempt must appear valid."

"Ah, but the lad has such a sweet young body," the Principal said. "Of course, he's potentially more dangerous than the father... with that witch mother training him. Accursed woman! Ah, well, please continue, Sasuke."

"Happosai will have divined that we have an agent planted on him," Sasuke said."The obvious suspect is Dr. Tofu, who is indeed our agent. But Happosai has investigated and found that our doctor is a Ono School graduate with Imperial Conditioning — supposedly safe enough to minister even to the Emperor. Great store is set on Imperial Conditioning. It's assumed that ultimate conditioning cannot be removed without killing the subject. However, as someone once observed, given the right lever you can move a planet. We found the lever that moved the doctor."

"How?" Tatewaki-Rautha asked. He found this a fascinating subject. Everyone knew you couldn't subvert Imperial Conditioning!

"Another time," the Principal said. "Continue, Sasuke."

"In place of Tofu," Sasuke said, "we'll drag a most interesting suspect across Happosai's path. The very audacity of this suspect will recommend her to Happosai's attention."

"Her?" Tatewaki-Rautha asked.

"The Lady Nodoka herself," the Principal said.

"Is it not sublime?" Sasuke asked. "Happosai's mind will be so filled with this prospect it'll impair his function as a Mentat. He may even try to kill her." Sasuke frowned, then: "But I don't think he'll be able to carry it off."

"You don't want him to, eh?" the Principal asked.

"Don't distract me," Sasuke said. "While Happosai's occupied with the Lady Nodoka, we'll divert him further with uprisings in a few garrison towns and the like. These will be put down. The Duke must believe he's gaining a measure of security. Then, when the moment is ripe, we'll signal Tofu and move in with our major force... ah..."

"Go ahead, tell him all of it," the Principal said.

"We'll move in strengthened by two legions of Kaishaku disguised in Harkonnen livery."

"Kaishaku!" Tatewaki-Rautha breathed. His mind focused on the dread Imperial troops, the killers without mercy, the soldier-fanatics of the Mikado Emperor.

"You see how I trust you, Tatewaki, " the Principal said. "No hint of this must ever reach another Great House, else the Kokkai might unite against the Imperial House and there'd be chaos."

"The main point," Sasuke said, "is this: since House Harkonnen is being used to do the Imperial dirty work, we've gained a true advantage. It's a dangerous advantage, to be sure, but if used cautiously, will bring House Harkonnen greater wealth than that of any other House in the Imperium."

"You have no idea how much wealth is involved, Tatewaki," the Principal said. "Not in your wildest imaginings. To begin, we'll have an irrevocable directorship in the SHOGAKUKAN Company."

Tatewaki-Rautha nodded. Wealth was the thing. SHOGAKUKAN was the key to wealth, each noble House dipping from the company's coffers whatever it could under the power of the directorships. Those SHOGAKUKAN directorships — they were the real evidence of political power in the Imperium, passing with the shifts of voting strength within the Kokkai as it balanced itself against the Emperor and his supporters.

"The Duke Genma," Sasuke said, "may attempt to flee to the new Amazon scum along the desert's edge. Or he may try to send his family into that imagined security. But that path is blocked by one of His Majesty's agents — the planetary ecologist. You may remember her — Koron."

"Tachi remembers her," the Principal said. "Get on with it."

"You do not drool very prettily, Principal," Sasuke said.

"Get on with it, I command you!" the Principal roared.

Sasuke shrugged. "If matters go as planned," he said, "House Harkonnen will have a sub-han on Jusenkyo within a Standard year. Your uncle will have dispensation of that han. His own personal agent will rule on Jusenkyo."

"More profits," Tatewaki-Rautha said.

"Indeed," the Principal said. And he thought: It's only just. We're the ones who tamed Jusenkyo... except for the few mongrel Amazons hiding in the skirts of the desert... and some tame smugglers bound to the planet almost as tightly as the native labor pool.

"And the Great Houses will know that the Principal has destroyed the Atreides," Sasuke said. "They will know."

"They will know," the Principal breathed.

"Loveliest of all," Sasuke said, "is that the Duke will know, too. He knows now. He can already feel the trap."

"It's true the Duke knows," the Principal said, and his voice held a note of sadness. "He could not help but know... more's the pity."

The Principal moved out and away from the globe of Jusenkyo. As he emerged from the shadows, his figure took on dimension — grossly and immensely fat. And with subtle bulges beneath folds of his dark robes to reveal that all this fat was sustained partly by portable suspensors harnessed to his flesh. He might weigh two hundred Standard kilos in actuality, but his feet would carry no more than fifty of them.

"I am hungry," the Principal rumbled, and he rubbed his protruding lips with a beringed hand, stared down at Tatewaki-Rautha through fat-enfolded eyes. "Send for food, my darling. We will eat before we retire."


	3. Chapter 3

3

[Once again, this experiment takes the full text of Dune, edited to replace concepts and themes with a different set, drawn largely from the Ranma universe. Nothing is replaced at random. Every term change has been considered, some for thematic reasons, others for humor, and the last group simply to replace one set of ethnic sounding gibberish with another set of ethnic sounding gibberish. One special note: Bakusai has been changed in spelling to reflect pronunciation. As the 'u' is silent, it has been omitted.

 _Thus spoke St. Ranko-of-the-Knife : "The Reverend Miko must combine the seductive wiles of a courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin goddess, holding these attributes in tension so long as the powers of her youth endure. For when youth and beauty have gone, she will find that the place-between, once occupied by tension, has become a wellspring of cunning and resourcefulness."_

-from "Neko'Ken, Family Commentaries" by the Princess Nabiki

"Well, Nodoka, what have you to say for yourself?" asked the Reverend Miko.

It was near sunset at Castle Shonen on the day of Ranma's ordeal. The two women were alone in Nodoka's morning room while Ranma waited in the adjoining soundproofed Meditation Chamber.

Nodoka stood facing the south windows. She saw and yet did not see the evening's banked colors across meadow and river. She heard and yet did not hear the Reverend Miko's question.

There had been another ordeal once — so many years ago. A skinny girl with hair the color of obsidian, her body tortured by the winds of puberty, had entered the study of the Reverend Miko Gaius Helen Azusa, Proctor Superior of the Bene Rumiko school on Takahashi IX. Nodoka looked down at her right hand, flexed the fingers, remembering the pain, the terror, the anger.

"Poor Ranma," she whispered.

"I asked you a question, Nodoka!" The old woman's voice was snappish, demanding.

"What? Oh..." Nodoka tore her attention away from the past, faced the Reverend Miko, who sat with back to the stone wall between the two west windows. "What do you want me to say?"

"What do I want you to say? What do I want you to say?" The old voice carried a tone of cruel mimicry.

"So I had a son!" Nodoka flared. And she knew she was being goaded into this anger deliberately.

"You were told to bear only daughters to the Atreides."

"It meant so much to him," Nodoka pleaded.

"And you in your pride thought you could produce the Kwisatz Nyannichuan!" Nodoka lifted her chin. "I sensed the possibility."

"You thought only of your Duke's desire for a son," the old woman snapped. "And his desires don't figure in this. An Atreides daughter could've been wed to a Harkonnen heir and sealed the breach. You've hopelessly complicated matters. We may lose both bloodlines now."

"You're not infallible," Nodoka said. She braved the steady stare from the old eyes.

Presently, the old woman muttered: "What's done is done."

"I vowed never to regret my decision," Nodoka said.

"How noble," the Reverend Miko sneered. "No regrets. We shall see when you're a fugitive with a price on your head and every man's hand turned against you to seek your life and the life of your son."

Nodoka paled. "Is there no alternative?"

"Alternative? A Bene Rumiko should ask that?"

"I ask only what you see in the future with your superior abilities."

"I see in the future what I've seen in the past. You well know the pattern of our affairs, Nodoka. The race knows its own mortality and fears stagnation of its heredity. It's in the bloodstream — the urge to mingle genetic strains without plan. The Imperium, the ShoGaKuKan Company, all the Great Houses, they are but bits of flotsam in the path of the flood."

"ShoGaKuKan," Nodoka muttered. "I suppose it's already decided how they'll redivide the spoils of Jusenkyo."

"What is ShoGaKuKan but the weather vane of our times," the old woman said. "The Emperor and his friends now command fifty-nine point six-five per cent of the ShoGaKuKan directorship's votes. Certainly they smell profits, and likely as others smell those same profits his voting strength will increase. This is the pattern of history, girl."

"That's certainly what I need right now," Nodoka said. "A review of history."

"Don't be facetious, girl! You know as well as I do what forces surround us. We've a three-point civilization: the Imperial Household balanced against the Federated Great Houses of the Kokkai, and between them, the Guild with its damnable monopoly on interstellar transport. In politics, the tripod is the most unstable of all structures. It'd be bad enough without the complication of a feudal trade culture which turns its back on most science."

Nodoka spoke bitterly: "Chips in the path of the flood - and this chip here, this is the Duke Genma, and this one's his son, and this one's —"

"Oh, shut up, girl. You entered this with full knowledge of the delicate edge you walked."

"'I am Bene Rumiko: I exist only to serve'," Nodoka quoted.

"Truth." the old woman said. "And all we can hope for now is to prevent this from erupting into general conflagration, to salvage what we can of the key bloodlines."

Nodoka closed her eyes, feeling tears press out beneath the lids. She fought down the inner trembling, the outer trembling, the uneven breathing, the ragged pulse, the sweating of the palms. Presently, she said, "I'll pay for my own mistake."

"And your son will pay with you."

"I'll shield him as well as I'm able."

"Shield!" the old woman snapped. "You well know the weakness there! Shield your son too much, Nodoka, and he'll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny."

Nodoka turned away, looked out the window at the gathering darkness. "Is it really that terrible, this planet of Jusenkyo?"

"Bad enough, but not all bad. The Tenshin Amaguriken has been in there and softened it up somewhat." The Reverend Miko heaved herself to her feet, straightened a fold in her gown. "Call the boy in here. I must be leaving soon."

"Must you?"

The old woman's voice softened. "Nodoka, girl, I wish I could stand in your place and take your sufferings. But each of us must make her own path."

"I know."

"You're as dear to me as any of my own daughters, but I cannot let that interfere with duty."

"I understand... the necessity."

"What you did, Nodoka, and why you did it - we both know. But kindness forces me to tell you there's little chance your lad will be the Bene Rumiko Totality. You mustn't let yourself hope too much."

Nodoka shook tears from the corners of her eyes. It was an angry gesture. "You make me feel like a little girl again — reciting my first lesson." She forced the words out: "'Humans must never submit to animals.'" A dry sob shook her. In a low voice, she said: "I've been so lonely."

"It should be one of the tests," the old woman said. "Humans are almost always lonely. Now summon the boy. He's had a long, frightening day. But he's had time to think and remember, and I must ask the other questions about these dreams of his."

Nodoka nodded, went to the door of the Meditation Chamber, opened it. "Ranma, come in now, please."

Ranma emerged with a stubborn slowness. He stared at his mother as though she were a stranger. Wariness veiled his eyes when he glanced at the Reverend Miko, but this time he nodded to her, the nod one gives an equal. He heard his mother close the door behind him.

"Young man," the old woman said, "let's return to this dream business."

"What do you want?"

"Do you dream every night?"

"Not dreams worth remembering. I can remember every dream, but some are worth remembering and some aren't."

"How do you know the difference?"

"I just know it."

The old woman glanced at Nodoka, back to Ranma."What did you dream last night? Was it worth remembering?"

"Yes." Ranma closed his eyes. "I dreamed a cavern... and heat... and a girl there — very skinny with big eyes. Her eyes are all green, no whites in them. I talk to her and tell her about you, about seeing the Reverend Miko on Shonen." Ranma opened his eyes.

"And the thing you tell this strange girl about seeing me, did it happen today?"

Ranma thought about this, then: "Yes. I tell the girl you came and put a stamp of strangeness on me."

"Stamp of strangeness," the old woman breathed, and again she shot a glance at Nodoka, returned her attention to Ranma. "Tell me truly now, Ranma, do you often have dreams of things that happen afterward exactly as you dreamed them?"

"Yes. And I've dreamed about that girl before."

"Oh? You know her?"

"I will know her."

"Tell me about her."

Again, Ranma closed his eyes. "We're in a little place in some rocks where it's sheltered. It's almost night, but it's so cold and I can see swirls of mist out of an opening in the rocks. We're... waiting for something... for me to go meet some people. And she's frightened but trying to hide it from me, and I'm excited. And she says: 'Tell me about the waters of your homeworld, Airen.'" Ranma opened his eyes. "Isn't that strange? My homeworld's Shonen. I've never even heard of a planet called Airen."

"Is there more to this dream?" Nodoka prompted.

"Yes. But maybe she was calling me Airen," Ranma said. "I just thought of that." Again, he closed his eyes. "She asks me to tell her about the waters. And I take her hand. And I say I'll tell her a poem. And I tell her the poem, but I have to explain some of the words — like beach and surf and seaweed and seagulls."

"What poem?" the Reverend Miko asked.

Ranma opened his eyes. "It's just one of Ukyo Halleck's tone poems for sad times."

Behind Ranma, Nodoka began to recite:

"I remember salt smoke from a beach fire

And shadows under the pines —

Solid, clean... fixed —

Seagulls perched at the tip of land,

White upon green...

And a wind comes through the pines

To sway the shadows;

The seagulls spread their wings,

Lift

And fill the sky with screeches.

And I hear the wind

Blowing across our beach,

And the surf,

And I see that our fire

Has scorched the seaweed."

"That's the one," Ranma said.

The old woman stared at Ranma, then: "Young man, as a Proctor of the Bene Rumiko, I seek the Kwisatz Nyannichuan, the male who truly can become one of us. Your mother sees this possibility in you, but she sees with the eyes of a mother. Possibility I see, too, but no more."

She fell silent and Ranma saw that she wanted him to speak. He waited her out.

Presently, she said: "As you will, then. You've depths in you; that I'll grant."

"May I go now?" he asked.

"Don't you want to hear what the Reverend Miko can tell you about the Kwisatz Nyannichuan?" Nodoka asked.

"She said those who tried for it died."

"But I can help you with a few hints at why they failed," the Reverend Miko said.

She talks of hints, Ranma thought. She doesn't really know anything. And he said: "Hint then."

"And be damned to me?" She smiled wryly, a crisscross of wrinkles in the old face. "Very well: 'That which submits rules.'"

He felt astonishment: she was talking about such elementary things as tension within meaning. Did she think his mother had taught him nothing at all?

"That's a hint?" he asked.

"We're not here to bandy words or quibble over their meaning," the old woman said. "The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows — a wall against the wind. This is the willow's purpose."

Ranma stared at her. She said purpose and he felt the word buffet him, reinfecting him with terrible purpose. He experienced a sudden anger at her: fatuous old witch with her mouth full of platitudes.

"You think I could be this Kwisatz Nyannichuan," he said. "You talk about me, but you haven't said one thing about what we can do to help my father. I've heard you talking to my mother. You talk as though my father were dead. Well, he isn't!"

"If there were a thing to be done for him, we'd have done it," the old woman growled. "We may be able to salvage you. Doubtful, but possible. But for your father, nothing. When you've learned to accept that as a fact, you've learned a real Bene Rumiko lesson."

Ranma saw how the words shook his mother. He glared at the old woman. How could she say such a thing about his father? What made her so sure? His mind seethed with resentment.

The Reverend Miko looked at Nodoka."You've been training him in the Way — I've seen the signs of it. I'd have done the same in your shoes and devil take the Rules."

Nodoka nodded.

"Now, I caution you," said the old woman, "to ignore the regular order of training. His own safety requires the Voice. He already has a good start in it, but we both know how much more he needs... and that desperately." She stepped close to Ranma, stared down at him. "Goodbye, young human. I hope you make it. But if you don't — well, we shall yet succeed."

Once more she looked at Nodoka. A flicker sign of understanding passed between them. Then the old woman swept from the room, her robes hissing, with not another backward glance. The room and its occupants already were shut from her thoughts.

But Nodoka had caught one glimpse of the Reverend Miko's face as she turned away. There had been tears on the seamed cheeks. The tears were more unnerving than any other word or sign that had passed between them this day.


	4. Chapter 4

And once again, we continue, mixing characters and themes from Ranma and the mix of Chinese and Japanese culture his canon represents, with that of Dune (stripping out the middle eastern references wherever possible). I have begun this and seen criticisms that my text is too close to the original... which is of course the point. Yet, to not finish is to admit defeat, and more importantly, deny the value, both humorous and serious, of the project. The purpose of this is to satisfy myself that it can be done and done well.  
And so, I shall preface some of these chapters with my thoughts. In this, I was primarily concerned with transforming Dune, a world of no water, into Pool, a world of too much water... without making Pool an ocean planet. Instead, I have, as you will see below, opted for a world of unending mountains, where sandstorms have been replaced with blizzards and dust with mist. It was important to keep the stillsuits in some form, and so I transposed one fundamental need (water) for an even more fundamental need (warmth). If a world like Arrakis can be made out of a lush world via faunagenic terraforming, then Jusenkyo too should have that quality. But enough of that. Back to the story.

4

 _You have read that Neko'Ken had no playmates his own age on Shonen. The dangers were too great. But Neko'Ken did have wonderful companion-teachers. There was Ukyo Halleck, the troubadour-warrior. You will sing some of Ukyo's songs, as you read along in this book. There was Thufir Happosai, the old Mentat Master of Ninjas, who struck fear even into the heart of the Mikado Emperor. There were Hibiki Idaho, the Swordmaster of the Kensai; Dr. Wellington Tofu, a name black in treachery but bright in knowledge; the Lady Nodoka, who guided her son in the Bene Rumiko Way, and — of course — the Duke Genma, whose qualities as a father have long been overlooked,_

-from "A Child's History of Neko'Ken" by the Princess Nabiki

Thufir Happosai slipped into the training room of Castle Shonen, closed the door softly. He stood there a moment, feeling old and tired and storm-leathered. His left leg ached where it had been slashed once in the service of the Old Duke.

~Three generations of them now,~ he thought.

He stared across the big room bright with the light of noon pouring through the skylights, saw the boy knelt with back to the door, intent on papers and charts spread across a short table.

~How many times must I tell that lad never to settle himself with his back to a door?~ Happosai cleared his throat.

Ranma remained bent over his studies.

A cloud shadow passed over the skylights. Again, Happosai cleared his throat.

Ranma straightened, spoke without turning: "I know. I'm kneeling with my back to a door."

Happosai suppressed a smile, strode across the room.

Ranma looked down at the grizzled old man who hopped up onto a corner of the table. Happosai's eyes were two pools of alertness in a dark and deeply seamed face.

"I heard you coming down the hall," Ranma said. "And I heard you open the door."

"The sounds I make could be imitated."

"I'd know the difference."

~He might at that,~ Happosai thought. ~That witch-mother of his is giving him the deep training, certainly. I wonder what her precious school thinks of that? Maybe that's why they sent the old Proctor here — to whip our dear Lady Nodoka into line.~

Happosai pulled up a stationary box across from Ranma, sat down facing the door. He did it pointedly, leaned back and studied the room. It struck him as an odd place suddenly, a stranger-place with most of its hardware already gone off to Jusenkyo. A training table remained, and a kendo mirror with its crystal prisms quiescent, the target dummy beside it patched and padded, looking like an ancient foot soldier maimed and battered in the wars.

~There stand I,~ Happosai thought.

"Thufir, what're you thinking?" Ranma asked.

Happosai looked at the boy. "I was thinking we'll all be out of here soon and likely never see the place again."

"Does that make you sad?"

"Sad? Nonsense! Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place." He glanced at the charts on the table. "And Jusenkyo is just another place."

"Did my father send you up to test me?"

Happosai scowled — the boy had such observing ways about him. He nodded. "You're thinking it'd have been nicer if he'd come up himself, but you must know how busy he is. He'll be along later."

"I've been studying about the blizzards on Jusenkyo."

"The blizzards. I see."

"They sound pretty bad."

"That's too cautious a word: bad. Those blizzards build up through six or seven thousand kilometers of canyons and glaciers, feeding on anything that can give them a push — coriolis force, other storms, anything that has an ounce of energy in it. They can blow up to seven hundred kilometers an hour, loaded with everything loose that's in their way — stones, rocks, everything. They can eat flesh off bones and etch the bones to slivers."

"Why don't they have weather control?"

"Jusenkyo has special problems, costs are higher, and there'd be maintenance and the like. The Guild wants a dreadful high price for satellite control and your father's House isn't one of the big rich ones, lad. You know that."

"Have you ever seen the Amazons?"

The lad's mind is darting all over today, Happosai thought.

"Like as not I have seen them," he said. "There's little to tell them from the folk of the basin and vale. They all wear those great flowing robes. And they stink to heaven in any closed space. It's from those suits they wear — call them 'chillsuits' — that reclaim the body's own heat."

Ranma swallowed, suddenly aware of the heat of his own skin, remembering a dream of cold. That people could want so for warmth they had to recycle their body heat struck him with a feeling of desolation. "Heat's precious there," he said.

Happosai nodded, thinking: Perhaps I'm doing it, getting across to him the importance of this planet as an enemy. It's madness to go in there without that caution in our minds.

Ranma looked up at the skylight, aware that the sun had come out. He saw the brightness spreading across the gray meta-glass. "Heat," he said.

"You'll learn a great concern for heat," Happosai said. "As the Duke's son you'll never want for it, but you'll see the pressures of cold all around you."

Ranma warmed his lips with his tongue, thinking back to the day a week ago and the ordeal with the Reverend Miko. She, too, had said something about heat starvation.

"You'll learn about the funeral peaks," she'd said, "about the wilderness that is empty, the wasteland where nothing lives except the juice and the Mistdragons. You'll stain your eyepits to reduce the snow glare. Shelter will mean a hollow out of the wind and hidden from view. You'll ride upon your own two feet without 'thopter or groundcar or mount."

And Ranma had been caught more by her tone — singsong and wavering than by her words.

"When you live upon Jusenkyo," she had said, "kami, the mountains are empty. The suns will be your friends, the wind your enemy."

Ranma had sensed his mother come up beside him away from her post guarding the door. She had looked at the Reverend Miko and asked: "Do you see no hope. Your Reverence?"

"Not for the father." And the old woman had waved Nodoka to silence, looked down at Ranma. "Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things..." She held up four big-knuckled fingers. "... the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous, and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing..." She closed her fingers into a fist. "... without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!"

A week had passed since that day with the Reverend Miko. Her words were only now beginning to come into full register. Now, kneeling in the training room with Thufir Happosai, Ranma felt a sharp pang of fear. He looked across at the Mentat's puzzled frown.

"Where were you woolgathering that time?" Happosai asked.

"Did you meet the Reverend Miko?"

"That Truthsayer witch from the Imperium?" Happosai's eyes quickened with interest. "I met her."

"She..." Ranma hesitated, found that he couldn't tell Happosai about the ordeal. The inhibitions went deep.

"Yes? What did she?"

Ranma took two deep breaths. "She said a thing." He closed his eyes, calling up the words, and when he spoke his voice unconsciously took on some of the old woman's tone: "'You, Ranma Atreides, descendant of kings, son of a Duke, you must learn to rule. It's something none of your ancestors learned.'" Ranma opened his eyes, said: "That made me angry and I said my father rules an entire planet. And she said, 'He's losing it.' And I said my father was getting a richer planet. And she said. 'He'll lose that one, too.' And I wanted to run and warn my father, but she said he'd already been warned — by you, by Mother, by many people."

"True enough," Happosai muttered.

"Then why're we going?" Ranma demanded.

"Because the Emperor ordered it. And because there's hope in spite of what that witch-spy said. What else spouted from this ancient fountain of wisdom?"

Ranma looked down at his right hand clenched into a fist beneath the table. Slowly, he willed the muscles to relax. ~She put some kind of hold on me,~ he thought. ~How?~

"She asked me to tell her what it is to rule," Ranma said. "And I said that one commands. And she said I had some unlearning to do."

~She hit a mark there right enough,~ Happosai thought. He nodded for Ranma to continue.

"She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel. She said he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men."

"How'd she figure your father attracted men like Hibiki and Ukyo?" Happosai asked.

Ranma shrugged. "Then she said a good ruler has to learn his world's language, that it's different for every world. And I thought she meant they didn't speak Galach on Jusenkyo, but she said that wasn't it at all. She said she meant the language of the rocks and growing things, the language you don't hear just with your ears. And I said that's what Dr. Tofu calls the Mystery of Life."

Happosai chuckled. "How'd that sit with her?"

"I think she got mad. She said the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. So I quoted the First Law of Mentat at her: 'A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.' That seemed to satisfy her."

~He seems to be getting over it,~ Happosai thought, ~but that old witch frightened him. Why did she do it?~

"Thufir," Ranma said, "will Jusenkyo be as bad as she said?"

"Nothing could be that bad," Happosai said and forced a smile. "Take those Amazons, for example, the renegade people of the mountains. By first-approximation analysis, I can tell you there're many, many more of them than the Imperium suspects. People live there, lad: a great many people, and..." Happosai put a sinewy finger beside his eye. "... they hate Harkonnens with a bloody passion. You must not breathe a word of this, lad. I tell you only as your father's helper."

"My father has told me of Nerima Secundus," Ranma said. "Do you know, Thufir, it sounds much like Jusenkyo... perhaps not quite as bad, but much like it."

"We do not really know of Nerima Secundus today," Happosai said. "Only what it was like long ago... mostly. But what is known — you're right on that score."

"Will the Amazons help us?"

"It's a possibility." Happosai stood up. "I leave today for Jusenkyo. Meanwhile, you take care of yourself for an old man who's fond of you, heh? Come around here like the good lad and sit facing the door. It's not that I think there's any danger in the castle; it's just a habit I want you to form."

Ranma got to his feet, moved around the table. "You're going today?"

"Today it is, and you'll be following tomorrow. Next time we meet it'll be on the soil of your new world." He gripped Ranma's right arm at the bicep. "Keep your knife arm free, heh? And your shield at full charge." He released the arm, patted Ranma's shoulder, whirled, and - leaping from the table top - strode quickly to the door.

"Thufir!" Ranma called.

Happosai turned, standing in the open doorway.

"Don't sit with your back to any doors," Ranma said.

A grin spread across the seamed old face. "That I won't, lad. Depend on it." And he was gone, shutting the door softly behind.

Ranma sat down where Happosai had been, straightened the papers. One more day here, he thought. He looked around the room. ~We're leaving.~ The idea of departure was suddenly more real to him than it had ever been before. He recalled another thing the old woman had said about a world being the sum of many things — the people, the dirt, the growing things, the moons, the tides, the suns — the unknown sum called nature, a vague summation without any sense of the now. And he wondered: ~What is the now?~

The door across from Ranma banged open and a bishi idol of a man lurched through it preceded by a handful of weapons.

"Well, Ukyo Halleck," Ranma called, "are you the new weapons master?"

Halleck kicked the door shut with one heel. "You'd rather I came to play games, I know," he said. He glanced around the room, noting that Happosai's men already had been over it, checking, making it safe for a duke's heir. The subtle code signs were all around.

Ranma watched the rolling, handsome man set himself back in motion, veer toward the training table with the load of weapons, saw the nine-string shamisen slung over Ukyo's shoulder with the spatula woven through the strings near the head of the fingerboard.

Halleck dropped the weapons on the exercise table, lined them up — the jians, the kaiken, the tantos, the slow-pellet stunners, the shield belts. The inkrose scar along his jawline writhed as he turned, casting a smile across the room.

"So you don't even have a good morning for me, you young imp," Halleck said. "And what barb did you sink in old Happosai? He passed me in the hall like a man running to his enemy's funeral."

Ranma grinned. Of all his father's men, he liked Ukyo Halleck best, knew the man's moods and deviltry, his humors, and thought of him more as a friend than as a hired sword.

Halleck swung the shamisen off his shoulder, began tuning it. "If y' won't talk, y' won't," he said.

Ranma stood, advanced across the room, calling out: "Well, Ukyo, do we come prepared for music when it's fighting time?"

"So it's sass for our elders today," Halleck said. He tried a chord on the instrument, nodded.

"Where's Hibiki Idaho?" Ranma asked. "Isn't he supposed to be teaching me weaponry?"

"Hibiki's gone to lead the second wave onto Jusenkyo," Halleck said. "All you have left is poor Ukyo who's fresh out of fight and spoiling for music." He struck another chord, listened to it, smiled. "And it was decided in council that you being such a poor fighter we'd best teach you the music trade so's you won't waste your life entire."

"Maybe you'd better sing me a lay then," Ranma said. "I want to be sure how not to do it."

"Ah-h-h, hah!" Ukyo laughed, and he swung into "Galacian Girls." his spatula a blur over the strings as he sang: "Oh-h-h, the Galacian girls will do it for pearls, and the Jusenkyoeen for water! But if you desire dames like consuming flames, try a Shonenin woman's daughter!"

"Not bad for such a poor hand with the spatula, " Ranma said, "but if my mother heard you singing a bawdy like that in the castle, she'd have your ears on the outer wall for decoration."

Ukyo pulled at his left ear. "Poor decoration, too, they having been bruised so much listening at keyholes while a young lad I know practiced some strange ditties on his shamisen."

"So you've forgotten what it's like to find sand in your bed," Ranma said. He pulled a shield belt from the table, buckled it fast around his waist. "Then, let's fight!"

Halleck's eyes went wide in mock surprise. "So! It was your wicked hand did that deed! Guard yourself today, young master — guard yourself." He grabbed up a jian, laced the air with it. "I'm a hellfiend out for revenge!"

Ranma lifted the companion jian, bent it in his hands, stood in the crane stance, one foot raised, knee bent and almost touching his other thigh. He let his manner go solemn in a comic imitation of Dr. Tofu.

"What a dolt my father sends me for weaponry," Ranma intoned. "This doltish Ukyo Halleck has forgotten the first lesson for a fighting man armed and shielded." Ranma snapped the force button at his waist, felt the crinkled-skin tingling of the defensive field at his forehead and down his back, heard external sounds take on characteristic shield-filtered flatness. "In shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack," Ranma said. "Attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the attack sinister. The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow tanto!" Ranma snapped up the jian, feinted fast and whipped it back for a slow thrust timed to enter a shield's mindless defenses.

Halleck watched the action, turned at the last minute to let the blunted blade pass his chest. "Speed, excellent," he said. "But you were wide open for an underhanded counter with a slip-tip."

Ranma stepped back, chagrined.

"I should whap your backside for such carelessness," Halleck said. He lifted a naked tanto from the table and held it up. "This in the hand of an enemy can let out your life's blood! You're an apt pupil, none better, but I've warned you that not even in play do you let a man inside your guard with death in his hand."

"I guess I'm not in the mood for it today," Ranma said.

"Mood?" Halleck's voice betrayed his outrage even through the shield's filtering. "What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises — no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the shamisen. It's not for fighting."

"I'm sorry, Ukyo."

"You're not sorry enough!"

Halleck activated his own shield, crouched with tanto outthrust in left hand, the jian poised high in his right. "Now I say guard yourself for true!" He leaped high to one side, then forward, pressing a furious attack.

Ranma fell back, parrying. He felt the field crackling as shield edges touched and repelled each other, sensed the electric tingling of the contact along his skin. ~What's gotten into Ukyo,~ he asked himself. ~He's not faking this!~ Ranma moved his left hand, dropped his kaiken into his palm from its wrist sheath.

"You see a need for an extra blade, eh?" Halleck grunted.

~Is this betrayal?~ Ranma wondered. ~Surely not Ukyo!~

Around the room they fought — thrust and parry, feint and counterfeint. The air within their shield bubbles grew stale from the demands on it that the slow interchange along barrier edges could not replenish. With each new shield contact, the smell of ozone grew stronger.

Ranma continued to back, but now he directed his retreat toward the exercise table. ~If I can turn him beside the table, I'll show him a trick,~ Ranma thought. ~One more step, Ukyo.~

Halleck took the step.

Ranma directed a parry downward, turned, saw Halleck's jian catch against the table's edge. Ranma flung himself aside, thrust high with jian and came in across Halleck's neckline with the kaiken. He stopped the blade an inch from the jugular.

"Is this what you seek?" Ranma whispered.

"Look down, lad," Ukyo panted.

Ranma obeyed, saw Halleck's tanto thrust under the table's edge, the tip almost touching Ranma's groin.

"We'd have joined each other in death," Halleck said. "But I'll admit you fought some better when pressed to it. You seemed to get the mood." And he grinned wolfishly, the inkrose scar rippling along his jaw.

"The way you came at me," Ranma said. "Would you really have drawn my blood?"

Halleck withdrew the tanto, straightened. "If you'd fought one whit beneath your abilities. I'd have scratched you a good one, a scar you'd remember. I'll not have my favorite pupil fall to the first Harkonnen tramp who happens along."

Ranma deactivated his shield, leaned on the table to catch his breath. "I deserved that, Ukyo. But it would've angered my father if you'd hurt me. I'll not have you punished for my failing."

"As to that," Halleck said, "it was my failing, too. And you needn't worry about a training scar or two. You're lucky you have so few. As to your father — the Duke'd punish me only if I failed to make a first-class fighting man out of you. And I'd have been failing there if I hadn't explained the fallacy in this mood thing you've suddenly developed."

Ranma straightened, slipped his kaiken back into its wrist sheath.

"It's not exactly play we do here," Halleck said.

Ranma nodded. He felt a sense of wonder at the uncharacteristic seriousness in Halleck's manner, the sobering intensity. He looked at the handsome inkrose scar on the man's jaw, remembering the story of how it had been put there by Beast Kodachi in a Harkonnen slave pit on Furinkan Prime. And Ranma felt a sudden shame that he had doubted Halleck even for an instant. It occurred to Ranma, then, that the making of Halleck's scar had been accompanied by pain — a pain as intense, perhaps, as that inflicted by a Reverend Miko. He thrust this thought aside; it chilled their world.

"I guess I did hope for some play today," Ranma said. "Things are so serious around here lately."

Ukyo turned away to hide his emotions. Something burned in his eyes. There was pain in him - like a blister, all that was left of some lost yesterday that Time had pruned off him.

How soon this child must assume his manhood, Halleck thought. How soon he must read that form within his mind, that contract of brutal caution, to enter the necessary fact on the necessary line: "Please list your next of kin."

Halleck spoke without turning: "I sensed the play in you, lad, and I'd like nothing better than to join in it. But this no longer can be play. Tomorrow we go to Jusenkyo. Jusenkyo is real. The Harkonnens are real."

Ranma touched his forehead with his jian blade held vertical.

Halleck turned, saw the salute and acknowledged it with a nod. He gestured to the practice dummy. "Now, we'll work on your timing. Let me see you catch that thing sinister. I'll control it from over here where I can have a full view of the action. And I warn you I'll be trying new counters today. There's a warning you'd not get from a real enemy."

Ranma stretched up on his toes to relieve his muscles. He felt solemn with the sudden realization that his life had become filled with swift changes. He crossed to the dummy, slapped the switch on its chest with his jian tip and felt the defensive field forcing his blade away.

"Hajime!" Halleck called, and the dummy pressed the attack.

Ranma activated his shield, parried and countered.

Halleck watched as he manipulated the controls. His mind seemed to be in two parts: one alert to the needs of the training fight, and the other wandering in fly-buzz.

~I'm the well-trained fruit tree,~ he thought. ~Full of well-trained feelings and abilities and all of them grafted onto me — all bearing for someone else to pick.~

For some reason, he recalled his younger sister, her elfin face so clear in his mind. But she was dead now — in a pleasure house for Harkonnen troops. She had loved sakura petals... or was it momo petals? He couldn't remember. It bothered him that he couldn't remember.

Ranma countered a slow swing of the dummy, brought up his left hand _ma'o'ori_.

~That clever little devil!~ Halleck thought, intent now on Ranma's interweaving hand motions. ~He's been practicing and studying on his own. That's not Hibiki's style, and it's certainly nothing I've taught him.~

This thought only added to Ukyo's sadness. ~I'm infected by mood,~ he thought. And he began to wonder about Ranma, if the boy ever listened fearfully to his pillow throbbing in the night.

"If wishes were horses we'd all ride," he murmured.

It was his mother's expression and he always used it when he felt the blackness of tomorrow on him. Then he thought what an odd expression that was to be taking to a planet that had never known plains or horses.


	5. Chapter 5

5

 _TOFU (to'fu), Wellington (weling-tun), Stdrd 10,082-10,191; medical doctor of the Ono School (grd Stdrd 10,112); md: Betty Marcus, B.G. (Stdrd 10,092-10,186?); chiefly noted as betrayer of Duke Genma Atreides. (Cf: Bibliography, Appendix VII [Imperial Conditioning] and Betrayal, The.)_

-from "Dictionary of Neko'Ken" by the Princess Nabiki

Although he heard Dr. Tofu enter the training room, noting the stiff deliberation of the man's pace, Ranma remained stretched out face down on the exercise table where the masseuse had left him. He felt deliciously relaxed after the workout with Ukyo Halleck.

"You do look comfortable," said Tofu in his calm, high-pitched voice.

Ranma raised his head, saw the man's stick figure standing several paces away, took in at a glance the wrinkled black kimono, the square block of a head with purple lips and drooping mustache, the triple-diamond tattoo of Imperial Conditioning on his forehead, the long black hair caught in the Ono School's silver ring at the left shoulder.

"You'll be happy to hear we haven't time for regular lessons today," Tofu said. "Your father will be along presently."

Ranma sat up.

"However, I've arranged for you to have a filmscroll viewer and several lessons during the crossing to Jusenkyo."

"Oh."

Ranma began pulling on his clothes. He felt excitement that his father would be coming. They had spent so little time together since the Emperor's command to take over the han of Jusenkyo.

Tofu crossed to the ell table, thinking: ~How the boy has filled out these past few months. Such a waste! Oh, such a sad waste.~ And he reminded himself: ~I must not falter. What I do is done to be certain my Betty no longer can be hurt by the Harkonnen beasts.~

Ranma joined him at the table, buttoning his jacket. "What'll I be studying on the way across?"

"Ah-h-h-h, the terranic life forms of Jusenkyo. The planet seems to have opened its arms to certain terranic life forms. It's not clear how. I must seek out the planetary ecologist when we arrive — a Dr. Koron — and offer my help in the investigation."

And Tofu thought: ~What am I saying? I play the hypocrite even with myself.~

"Will there be something on the Amazons?" Ranma asked.

"The Amazons?" Tofu drummed his fingers on the table, caught Ranma staring at the nervous motion, withdrew his hand.

"Maybe you have something on the whole Jusenkyoeen population," Ranma said.

"Yes, to be sure," Tofu said. "There are two general separations of the people — Amazons, they are one group, and the others are the people of the basin, the vale, and the lakes. There's some intermarriage, I'm told. The women of lake and vale villages prefer Amazon husbands; their men prefer Amazon wives. They have a saying: 'Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the mountains.'"

"Do you have pictures of them?"

"I'll see what I can get you. The most interesting feature, of course, is their eyes — totally green, no whites in them."

"Mutation?"

"No; it's linked to saturation of the blood with melange."

"The Amazons must be brave to live at the edge of that tundra."

"By all accounts," Tofu said. "They compose poems to their knives. Their women are as fierce as men. Even Amazon children are violent and dangerous. You'll not be permitted to mingle with them, I daresay."

Ranma stared at Tofu, finding in these few glimpses of the Amazons a power of words that caught his entire attention. ~What a people to win as allies!~ "And the Dragons?" Ranma asked.

"What?"

"I'd like to study more about the Mistdragons."

"Ah-h-h-h, to be sure. I've a filmscroll on a small specimen, only one hundred and ten meters long and twenty-two meters in diameter. It was taken in the northern latitudes. Dragons of more than four hundred meters in length have been recorded by reliable witnesses, and there's reason to believe even larger ones exist."

Ranma glanced down at a conical projection chart of the northern Jusenkyoeen latitudes spread on the table. "The mountain belt and south polar regions are marked uninhabitable. Is it the Dragons?"

"And the blizzards."

"But any place can be made habitable."

"If it's economically feasible," Tofu said. "Jusenkyo has many costly perils." He smoothed his drooping mustache. "Your father will be here soon. Before I go, I've a gift for you, something I came across in packing." He put an object on the table between them — black, oblong, no larger than the end of Ranma's thumb.

Ranma looked at it. Tofu noted how the boy did not reach for it, and thought: How cautious he is.

"It's a very old Blue Buddhist Sutra made for space travelers. Not a filmscroll, but actually printed on filament paper. It has its own magnifier and electrostatic charge system." He picked it up, demonstrated. "The scroll is held closed by the charge, which forces against spring-locked rods. You press the edge — thus, and the rods repel each other and the scroll opens to the panel you've selected."

"It's so small."

"But it has eighteen hundred panels. You press the edge — thus, and so... and the charge moves ahead one panel at a time as you read. Never touch the actual panels with your fingers. The filament tissue is too delicate." He closed the scroll, handed it to Ranma. "Try it."

Tofu watched Ranma work the panel adjustment, thought: ~I salve my own conscience. I give him the surcease of religion before betraying him. Thus may I say to myself that he has gone where I cannot go.~

"This must've been made before filmscrolls," Ranma said.

"It's quite old. Let it be our secret, eh? Your parents might think it too valuable for one so young."

And Tofu thought: ~His mother would surely wonder at my motives.~

"Well..." Ranma closed the scroll, held it in his hand. "If it's so valuable..."

"Indulge an old man's whim," Tofu said. "It was given to me when I was very young." And he thought: ~I must catch his mind as well as his cupidity.~ "Open it to four-sixty-seven Jizu — where it says: 'From warmth does all life begin.' There's a slight notch on the edge of the roll to mark the place."

Ranma felt the roll, detected two notches, one shallower than the other. He pressed the shallower one and the scroll spread open on his palm, its magnifier sliding into place. "Read it aloud," Tofu said.

Ranma wet his lips with his tongue, read: "Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us? What is there around us that we cannot — "

"Stop it!" Tofu barked.

Ranma broke off, stared at him.

Tofu closed his eyes, fought to regain composure. ~What perversity caused the book to open at my Betty's favorite passage?~ He opened his eyes, saw Ranma staring at him.

"Is something wrong?" Ranma asked.

"I'm sorry," Tofu said. "That was... my... dead wife's favorite passage. It's not the one I intended you to read. It brings up memories that are... painful."

"There are two notches," Ranma said.

~Of course,~ Tofu thought. ~Betty marked her passage. His fingers are more sensitive than mine and found her mark. It was an accident, no more.~

"You may find the book interesting," Tofu said. "It has much historical truth in it as well as good ethical philosophy."

Ranma looked down at the tiny scroll in his palm — such a small thing. Yet, it contained a mystery... something had happened while he read from it. He had felt something stir his terrible purpose.

"Your father will be here any minute," Tofu said. "Put the book away and read it at your leisure."

Ranma touched the edge of it as Tofu had shown him. The scroll sealed itself. He slipped it into his tunic. For a moment there when Tofu had barked at him, Ranma had feared the man would demand the scroll's return.

"I thank you for the gift. Dr. Tofu," Ranma said, speaking formally. "It will be our secret. If there is a gift of favor you wish from me, please do not hesitate to ask."

"I... need for nothing," Tofu said. And he thought: ~Why do I stand here torturing myself? And torturing this poor lad... though he does not know it. Oeyh! Damn those Harkonnen beasts! Why did they choose me for their abomination?~


End file.
